Title: feel good
Fandom: World of Warcraft
Rating: Teen-ish
Length: ~500
Content notes: (implied temporary) major character death, canon-typical violence
Summary: Azuregos has met her before (oh, has he), but this is the first time he looks twice.

Azuregos shudders free of his body before the horde of treasure hunters can begin to carve him up: once, years ago, he had hung on as long as he could, trying to kill one or two more, and they had hamstrung him while he still breathed. That had been an unpleasant experience, one he has no desire to repeat now.

He curls a ghostly lip as he watches the mortals butcher his corpse, peeling away hide and stripping off great chunks of muscle and sinew. Barbarians, he thinks. Savages. Orcs; it must be Tuesday.

But he knows how it goes from here, so there's no reason to stick around; he turns tail on the grisly sight and walks off. It is, after all, just as easy to search out more artifacts while incorporeal, and full of far fewer inconveniences.

He wanders the coasts and mountains for a few days: inspecting a few ruins he's already gone through more than once, finding a pretty little tidepool he hasn't seen before with a family of pale blue murlocs in residence, noting the location of a bit of magical residue to retrieve later. Eventually, he ends up at the same small, barren graveyard he always does by virtue of its remote location; he's never seen anyone else there, so he never has to deal with anyone in those first few vulnerable minutes of being alive again.

The spirit healer is there, of course, bound to the spot even more firmly than he's chained to Azshara. She smiles at him from under her pale hood. Of course she would, Azuregos thinks grouchily. He's a repeat customer, after all, isn't he? It's not like he wants to stuff his soul back into the unholy mess they always leave of his body - especially not after a week's decay.

"Are you ready to return?" she asks, her voice a gentle, echoing whisper. It's a politeness he appreciates; she always asks, he always agrees, she always takes great care as she recreates him.

But maybe - just maybe - there's something else this time. Maybe he's imagining it like a fool, or maybe she sounds lonely. She might well be, if she never sees anyone but him, and he credits himself on being a good judge of character in any case.

He clicks ghostly jaws together silently, thoughtfully, watching her as she watches him. She is quite beautiful, it's true, though not to his usual taste; and while the energy that clings to her like smoke is not the arcane power that he craves, it is still... enticing. Alluring.

It has been so long - what, nearly five hundred years, now? - since he left Anachronos and Vaelastrasz, so long since he met anyone he could admire as an equal. Perhaps that half-millenia is what's allowing him to entertain such a bizarre idea now. But she is sweet and pretty and magical, and if she is a little lonely, he might - might - admit, that he has been, too, despite the intermittent company of what few friends he's scrounged.

"No," he answers, for the first time, and smiles toothily as she purses her lips in surprise. "I think I'll stay a while."